The civil marriage dilemma

Other Voices

By Ahmad alsarraf

ree civil forces in Muslim countries have been demanding for some time now permission for civil marriage between people of different sects and recognition of this marriage as legal, instead of what is happening now, where everyone who wishes to marry a person from another religion either travels to another country, such as Cyprus for example or opt for a temporary civil marriage, or if the man converts to a woman’s religion, often Islamic, even if this conversion is a kind of mockery just for the sake of completing the marriage formalities.

In Lebanon, the Minister of the Interior, Raya Al-Hassan, recently moved the issue of civil marriage, and this resulted in ‘a beautiful intellectual storm’, between the supporters and the opponents according to the opinion of one of the readers, Ilham El-Helou.

Although this intellectual storm did not bring immediate results, due to the massive systematic response to the idea by many conservative forces, it will inevitably contribute to the development of the applicable laws and regulations towards allowing this type of marriages.

The new generations will not remain idle but they will demand the right to choose what they feel is right or what they want, unless the conservative opponents succeed in drowning the young people into daily issues by exploiting poverty and ignorance, the two scourges which inflict the humanity to change their convictions. Here ignorance means we do not talk about academic degrees, rather, the inability to see reason, thought and logic in crucial issues.

The reader Elham Elhelou says in 1936 the issuance of Resolution 60/ LR, which combined the privacy of the sects in Lebanon with modernist values derived from the thought of the Republic in France, the forefront of which is the freedom of conscience and recognition of the individual, and his right to choose the sect he/ she wants to embrace. The decision referred to a group of Lebanese who are not members of any sect and but subjected to a civil law in their personal status.

alsarraf

However, those who objected to the approval of a “voluntary” civil marriage between any sect or religion did not know the foregoing theory, did not read well the Lebanese constitution – its introduction and articles – and did not go beyond their horizons by reading the Universal Declaration of Human Rights, but went deeper into the essence of the religion that accompanies freedom. And who should be open to the other, heralds his thoughts and beliefs with “the best,” and not by intimidation.

Yesterday, the Maronite Patriarch, Bechara Boutros Al-Rahi welcomed the civil ‘compulsory’ marriage that equals the Lebanese, and his ‘boobytrapped’ words and his endorsement of civil marriage without using the term ‘compulsory’ or ‘optional’ or ‘between’ attributes to the fact that he has thrown the ball into the court of others or Muslims, and the latter is desperate for refusing it in particular, and fears that civil marriage will become ‘compulsory’ because compulsion here means adherence to it, and making it the first reference. Thus, the provisions of polygamy, inheritance, divorce, etc. are subject to it, and therefore it is imperative that Muslim clerics reject it.

What is important in the intellectual debate that is not currently fruitful on the ground is to rise to the level of reason. The linking of civil marriage to vice, dissolution and societal disintegration is a form of “initiation” for the Lebanese, because religions have not yet been able to prevent marital infidelity, family disputes, family disintegration, and throwing children into waste containers.

Nor did religions solve or prevent the civil wars, in Lebanon and elsewhere, which has killed and maimed more than 200,000 Lebanese and the displaced twice that number or more. Nor did sectarian society rejecting civil marriage could prevent or limit the corruption inside institutions, including religious institutions and courts, and it is clear that secular societies have preceded us in the field of human rights, scientific progress, and social prosperity.

Given this scenario, the question for attaching all the bad qualities to secular and civil, and clearing the sectarian situation didn’t provide the states with prosperity, unless we believe that we are the best in the world ... in everything!

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